It costs as little as $1,000 to bribe an official at the Swallowfield motor vehicle examination depot in Kingston to certify your car as fit and roadworthy, as a Sunday Observer investigator, who put the system to the test, discovered last week.

But the real cost is substantially higher – in human tragedy, insurance premiums and health care delivery, road safety and insurance executives say.

Although precise data on the cause of motor vehicle accidents are not kept, officials say that a fair number occurs because vehicles were in some way mechanically defective, but certified as fit by corrupt officials.

The results include damaged vehicles, serious injury, with the attendant bills for repair and health services. A decade-and-a-half ago the cost of motor vehicle accidents to the Jamaican economy was put at US$40 million a year – J$2.48 billion at current exchange rates. That bill is rising.

A Sunday Observer reporter found out first-hand last week.

(See first-person story below

IT was a clumsy undercover operation, even by layman’s standards. The cameraman was positioned too close to the ‘transaction’ and the man’s friend had detected the camera and quickly alerted him, “You’re being snapped (photographed)!”

My cover was blown.

Clearly, if this were an undercover drug operation, based on what I’ve seen in the movies, I would not have left there alive. But it soon became apparent, at one of the island’s motor vehicle examination depot, that the illegal practice of ‘buying’ fitness documents was not exactly risky business.

The man who took the envelop with the expired fitness papers, the receipt from the tax office and his “fee” for supplying renewed fitness papers didn’t seem to care that a camera was focused on him.

“Ah fe him business dat,” he said, shrugging off the photographer. “Come back later,” he told me.

He was the contact I had made a week earlier: a man in his late 50s, who said he had lived on the depot’s premises for ‘many years’.

At that time, our conversation, after preliminary introductions, went something like this:

Reporter: My son brought his car last week to pass it, but they told him it makes too much noise. He would have to get a silencer. Do you know anybody who can pass it for me?

Man: Yeh man, just carry de thing (papers) an come.

Reporter: How much it going to cost?

Man: Ah two ($2,000) we charge.

Reporter: You sure you can get it done?

Man: I work wid dem all de while.

Reporter: Can two ($2,000) split for everybody?

Man: (Laughs) You have more can put?

Reporter: No

Man: You buy the receipt yet?

Reporter: Yes.

Man: The car alright? It working alright?

Reporter: Yeh man, is just de noise.

One week later when I walked in, his face lit up with a smile of recognition. This time, my cameraman was ready.

Reporter: You remember me?

Man: Yes.

Reporter: Ah brought the thing. How much you say it was again?

Man: Two ($2,000)

At this point, I noticed a slim-built man in his early 60s taking a seat close by. He sat almost directly in front of the camera. “Dem a snap you!” he said to the man.

The man took the envelope, looked around, spotted the car which had both photographer and driver inside, then turned his back towards them. He gave me his cell phone number and instructed me to call him later in the day.

I could only hope that he would continue to play, as planned.

He didn’t. The next day before presenting myself, I called twice. Both calls went unanswered.

When I arrived, I was told he had just left. His girlfriend handed me the envelop, but even before I looked inside, her detached attitude told me my plan had failed. The money and documents were inside, just as I had left them.

Determined not to accept failure, I decided on a contingency plan. This time I would approach one of the examiners.

Boldly, I called a young man aside. I repeated my story and he went inside the wooden building to talk to his ‘senior’.

Within minutes he came back, took the papers with the money inside (his price was $1,000) and within 30 minutes I was driving out of there with the renewed fitness documents.

No one even took a cursory glance at the car.